Trapped

My Childville

Theatrical and architectural, this giant gown resembles a prop of former times and the skirt divides with a tent-like opening. Within the skirt, an enclosure houses several white rats within a terrain of recycled materials. The fairy tale pairing of gown and rodent is proverbial. The scurrying creatures within the fantastic environment suggest the potential for transformation, yet they are held in check by the crinoline-shaped cage. The sculpture references a period in Santa Barbara history when Lillian Child, a wealthy landowner, allowed a shantytown to be built on her expansive property. Dubbed Childville, the area solely housed male tenants who lived in shelters fashioned from refuse. Ominous and celebratory, the sculpture suggests the complexity of the Childville effort. University Art Museum, Santa Barbara, CA June 2008.

Vaulted

This project developed from my interest in the emptiness of this sky lit space. I was looking at early examples of painting and sculpture galleries from the 16th century, with their ornately frescoed ceilings. I began to compare these with current typologies of vaulted ceilings in large shopping malls such as the Galleria in Milan. I thought this reference to past ideals of learning and display of precious objects and commercialism was related to higher education with its lofty goals and monetary realities.

April 2007, PVC and Wire Mesh

Cheetopia

Simultaneously in awe and suspicious of the natural landscape, Cheetopia, sprang from a chance experience noticing a small pile of litter on a newly landscaped area of the UCSB campus. This project suggests a deeper interplay between these discarded food items and the landscape itself.

Walled Off

Window installation at 855 at The Arts Center, Carpinteria, CA June 2007.

Cast Handmade Thai Kozo paper and wooden armature.

Shifted Axis

An investigation of the architectural space of Storke Plaza, designed in the 1960’s at the center of the UC-Santa Barbara campus. The recessed plaza with three stairway entrances was designed for crowd control of student protests. Although centrally located, Storke Plaza is now a dead space with almost no pedestrian traffic or student activities. This shift in functionality is a starting point for this installation. The plaza now exists as quiet and meditative space, whose design parallels religious architectural space. Places on the architectural grid are a series of semi-abstracted rectangular plaster casting of twenty individuals kneeling. Each cast is lined parallel to the paving pattern, which also corresponds to the architectural proportions of the buildings in the plaza. From there the casts are shifted slightly to face in the direction of Mecca creating a new sense of directionality in the plaza space. This project seeks to create a new functional possibility for the space as area for consideration and discourse.

Storke Plaza, UC-Santa Barbara, December 2006

Bound

An installation on the south facing wall of the Davis Museum and Cultural Center. This project examines the relationship between the student body and the Museum as a cultural and social institution, an architectural presence on campus and an ideal.

Irreversible Succession

An exploration of change in a woman’s body over time. This collaborative project involved creating a plaster cast of the upper body of a female volunteer every day for one month. Here the casts are arranged in chronological order on the steps of the Jewett Arts Center.

Gift of the Class of 2005; as an enhancement to the Gift of the Class of 1887

This work explores societal notions of an idealized female form and how that is expressed in public sculpture.